I think she’s been planning this long enough that she’s kept a loaded flintlock pistol around “just in case”. Caplock guns have been around since the 1830’s, so this has been awhile in the planning.
Nice detail on the gun firing Paul. Love the flash from the pan as the main charge goes off. The few times I’ve fired a flintlock, I’ve always had trouble holding steady for the split second it takes for the pan to ignite the main charge.

OK not like we didn’t see that coming. She may be “cured”, but remember that one of the initial side effects of anti-depressants is the depressed person actually gets enough motivation to be able to kill themselves before they get over the depression.

Research has shown that discharging a muzzle-loading firearm in your mouth is hazardous. Those puppies are LOUD! At the very least you’re going to die deaf. And then you’ll spend the afterlife yelling *Pardon?*, and you won’t enjoy it at all.

I agree with inquisitive. Jin has live a long time immune to pains from bumps, bruises, bullets, etc. The pain she felt was a new sensation to her. SO she wanted to experiement with it. I believe that she did not think it would actually harm her. She just wanted to see what it felt like. She propbabaly has had it around a long time. She may even have tried to use it many times and it failed each time.

There’s a several year old issue of Superman where he has lost his powers and burns himself making dinner by trying to pick something straight off the stove without potholders. Lois turns to him and says “Clark–hot!”

Jin is probably still in the “high” of having come back and her brain hasn’t quite kicked back into gear.

I think it’s kinda both.
She’s like, “Hmm… I wonder if…” and in her head thinking, “Omigosh, it could really WORK this time!! EEEEE!! XD”

Yeah, after living as long as she has, going though all that suffering, and wishing you could die for most of that time… I’m not surprised she’s not the least bit solemn when it comes to an act like this.
She’s like, “Alright!! Let’s do this thing already!!”

You know, I think you have a point. After all, didn’t she tell Alan that she wanted to grow old and die. That’s something entirely different than suicidal…that’s just wanting to have an expiration date.

Yes but we had to wait for Friday of course for Paul to give us the customary weekend cliffhanger. Although a cliffhanger would have been ending it at the inset and leaving us hanging to see the rest of panel 2.

I’m not certain, but I think Bud had her back to Jin. This lends creedence to the notion (as expressed by MistressPounce) that she was thrown/pushed by May. Note, May is also the one who called out. Bud’s arms are also just straight out, as if trying to break her fall, not on Jin somewhere as they would be were she trying to grab her gun away.

If the glyph is indeed “active”, then, in Jin’s case, it almost seems to be “active like toddler”. She, like a child, is full of child-like observations, questions and curiosity.. re: “what does this thing (gun) do/feel like?”

It’s not a shotgun, that would be a flintlock pistol firing a very large ball ammunition. Usually on the order of 50 caliber. That would be 1/2 an inch in diameter. (I’m assuming it’s a flintlock as I can’t actually see the end of the lock mechanism.)

I know suicide isn’t funny, but the odd-ball look of Jin, and that flintlock.. I dunno..it made me giggle… A blunderbuss, triggered with her toe would be the only thing topping this weirdness…

By the by..wow..Bud has good reflexes!
Aand, it may be that Jin is still determined to kill herself for failing to stop the chimera.
Trick is now to get someone in to convince her there are people around her that happen to like her very much, and they would be devastated, without heaping onto her already considerable sense of guilt.

yep, you know how buggy new driver code gets just in today’s computers… now think of the bugs that a golem’s OS can develop, on a CPU that has enough processing power to run an A.I. program, plus all the “other” stuff it needs to simulate a real person, weapons systems, poiting, etc, etc. etc… AND, it’s one that hasn’t been hard rebooted in over 82650 years?

remember she’s the ONLY one, other than the new version of Shelly (and she doesn’t really count because she was also elsewhere the entire time), that has REALLY truly LIVED thru all 56 Calendar Machine resets + this loop, May was in the demon realm that time doesn’t affect, Phix is also “outside” of time, and she’s just gotten SOOO tired of the inanity of life, she just wants it to end…

the reason she looks “funny” is because she’s crossing her eyes to properly see the trigger mechanism, and the end of the barrel at the same time to ensure the correct aiming of said gun… it could be a CAP-lock pistol as well, they are basically the same construction, but the seal around where the primer cap is fitted isn’t very gas-tight, and would make a nice big flash like that as well; the difference being that in a flintlock the little pan where the gunpowder sits would indeed have been dumped to the floor the way she was holding it, practically up-side down, but the cap-lock version there is no external pan with gunpowder in it, and it is set off when the hammer hits a small primer cap very similar to today’s kiddie cap guns with the little red plastic thimbles for ammo, it sits on a nipple with a hole thru it into the main charge, but when fired, the seal isn’t very tight and a flash could be seen coming back out the tiny hole.

at least this is infinitely more believable than Capt. Jack Sparrow’s single-shot pistol after he took at least 2 dips in the ocean with it and you NEVER see him reload it either. believe me, those things are NOT watertight!! YET IT STILL FIRES PERFECTLY!!! not to mention the reload time on cannons and guns back then, yet the movies show them as almost machine-gun-like in the rapidity of how quickly they can be fired again.

so give Paul some slack… it’s “artistic license” for the powder-flash to appear either way… 😉

have they discovered any compartments in the Sphinx? i know they discovered a tiny door at the top end of the “air vent” in the Queen’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid, but i don’t know about anything found at the Sphinx.

It looks to be a 19th-century flintlock to me–a caplock wouldn’t have the external spring visible to the observer’s left of the barrel in panel 2. That spring holds the pan cover in position over the priming pan so the primer charge won’t get wet or fall out. The frizzen (the piece of metal the flint scrapes against is attached to the hinged pan cover, and the flint scraping against the frizzen when the trigger is pulled swings the pan cover out of the way and lets the sparks hit the priming charge. A flintlock probably wouldn’t fire if held completely upside down, but would fire if more-or-less vertical (the powder doesn’t have time to fall out of the pan before it’s ignited by the sparks from the flint scraping against the frizzen). “Lock time” delay for a flintlock is typically anywhere from 1/20 to 1/4 second, although the standard safety procedure in case of a misfire is to keep the weapon pointed down-range for a minimum of 10 seconds before trying to reprime or otherwise deal with the misfire.

Fairportfan- I’ve heard that they actually did fire the weapons for some of the work. Remember special effects were in the very beginning of development. The man who played the indian/english halfbreed was a noted black powder marksman in the late 60’s I’ve been told.

Well, at least one company made a twelve-shot 36-caliber revolver (more or less what we’d call a .38 today – the actual diameter of a “.38” round is .357–.358 inches (9.0678 mm); 9mm, .38 and .357 are the same diameter round, though they vary widely in bullet weight and power…

The best flintlocks were so fast and well made you *could* fire them upside down, and they didn’t have that annoying “Daniel Boone” hang-fire either.
I doubt Jin would settle for anything but the very best.

Here is a fairly good explination of how a flintlock pisto works in case anyone is interested. http://science.howstuffworks.com/flintlock2.htm
Looking at the drawing just before she fires the gun it looks like the pan and frizen are visable just in front of the lock.

I recognized the song right away. I learned to play it on the piano 35 years ago and would even occassionaly sing the lyrics. Most people thought I had made up the words when they heard them because they couldn’t believe that a song about suicide would be used for a theme song.

Interesting how much of the original “Golem”-Myth will appear. By adding or wiping a hebrew letter, Rabbi Loew destroyed his own creation changing the meaning of the spell that kept the golem alive from LIVE to DEATH.

Now is the time for bud to get Alan. He is the one of the only ones that might get her to accept her new ‘gift’. The others that might help her are Phix, Shelly and maybe Monica. Phix and Shelly have also been around thru-out the C.M. resets after all and can understand the insanity of seeing it happen so many times and feeling helpless from it.

Shelly might not be a good choice: “I died fifty-five friggin’ times and spent eighty thousand years in solitary to get that friggin’ widget, and you ABSOLUTELY ARE NOT gonna use it to check out early!”

A couple of things. She didn’t make the golems, the preists did from her recipie, so the results may vary somewhat from package illustration. Also, according to the dialog, it takes both the symbol and the key to do the job. The symbol to activate the correct “code” and the key to provide the energy to make it so.

Actually, the way it’s drawn, it is kind of cute. Also Paul impresses me yet again for providing another totally unexpected scene. It’s made all the more poignent, however, by the fact she tried it so soon after discovering her seeming mortality.

True, but worse still, she might be terribly injured and can’t die, just in great pain. In fact, I wonder what would have happened if she had shot herself? Would she have a big hole in her head, yet still alive and in agony? She has a life span now, but that doesn’t mean she can die of some other cause in the mean time. It may simply mean she has an expiry clock now. At the appointed time, she will just keel over and cease to exist.

Jimminy Chistmas Jin!! D8
… Where did that gun come from any way? Has she been toting it around all this time just waiting for a chance to kill herself? Or has she been shooting herself for years just for kicks when she gets bored? She was indestructible then, so it obviously wasn’t for self-defense and we all know she didn’t need a gun to kill someone.

Well anyway, crazy cliffhanger Paul. I agree with Jay-Em up above. Suicide isn’t funny, but the panel with Jin pointing the gun at herself it just so over the top and absurd, you kinda can’t help giggling.
Especially when you see it for the first time. The reaction is like, “WOAH!! Hold on Jin!!”

The universe should REWARD Jin for what she has done.
It has done so.
She now seems to be human (within rules) and has what she wants.

I don’t know if her relationship with Alan will survive. I don’t know if she won’t be run over by a bus tomorrow. All I know is that she has the chance happier than she has been for a while.
Her killing herself will not bring her that.

I suspect her suicide attempt is possibly because she is trying it before she ‘looses’ her human side again.

Those are good points. The universe only rewards survivors, however. If they make it to the top, it even rewards them with a glimpse of it’s inner workings. Not to mention their inner workings.

Yes, she may be in a “use it or lose it” mentality, taking advantage of her seeming mortality right away just to be sure.

If she were real, now would be the time to make her realize there is something she has never experienced first hand, despite being over 80K years old. Being a wife and mother(adoption) and growing old (maybe) with someone you love deeply. At the least, not having to go on for long after his death, assuming her new lifespan is less than 100 years.

Jin does look kinda cute being a bit cross-eyed looking down the gun barrel, and just for a second there i was wondering if its just a crazy moment of “monkey picks up shiny gun and looks down barrel”.

But as i dont think Jin would have a loaded gun at home .. even tho its a nice decorative display item .. she does get visits from mortals who could get hurt.

So im guessing the gun came from “internal storage” and the way she grips the gun .. cant really be mistaken as accidental im afraid.

Somehow I think there may be a few more bugs to work out. May is definitely mad scientist material – brilliant, but never considers any deeper than first order effects and consequences. Actually thinking something thru is totally alien to her.

That’s called the eiterative method of engineering. Keep making one change at a time until all the bugs are out, in systems that are mission-critical and that can be tested sufficiently and safely it is the preferred method of development.

Well, if suffocating in the Pun Jar is to be my fate, I can’t claim it’s not a deserved one. Many of my friends, and most of my family would probably say it’s many years overdue. All I can do is accept it with quiet dignity and grace (as Dr. Frankenstein put it), and blame it all on Bill Scott and Jay Ward.

I will, however, insist on one thing. The music at the wake must include a recording of the Glasstown United church choir, singing that stirring hymn Gloria! An Asphyxis Day, Oh!.

We should note that “fix” is a very poor choice of words here – no reflection on Pablo, because it’s used this way all over the English-speaking world. We use “fix” to indicate “repair,” but in a purer sense, it means “to make static.” Think of fixative in pastel drawings; think of fixing a butterfly to a board with a pin; think of getting a fix on your location. The only way a living being – golem, human being, animal, whatever – can be fixed is to kill it. Jin seems intent on fixing herself, in a completely different way than May had in mind. For every suicide, the fix is two-fold – to repair everything that’s wrong with their lives, and to render themselves non-living, even if only unintentionally.

Here, I thought that Jin had discovered the great gift of mortality, that we are given limited time so we must appreciate the blessings we’re given all the more. Instead, it looks like long life – virtual immortality – has become an affliction, and one to be removed as soon as possible. Couldn’t be done before, but now that she’s “fixed,” oh boy, let the last act get underway.

We thank you for your well considered arguments concerning the usage of the term “fix.’ While we appreciate your views on the subject, we have, by nearly unanimous consent (there’s always one), decided to reject them on the grounds that such a narrow interpretation would seriously restrict our usage of the term “Phix” in future poorly considered puns.

Please do not consider this a failure on your part, but rather a collective raspberry on our part.

Poor Jin. However, we should not be surprised that she attempted to do this. This comic, September 15, 2009 blissful shows why Jin would want to die. Another one is 2008-01-31-dealwiththiscrap. Finally the one that really made me sure Jin was serious :=( The real clincher is muzzle loaders have to be regularly unloaded and reloaded because the powder-charge gets damp. So she had to have reloaded that gun very recently. It is a flintlock in my estimation, because the side of the gun sticks out far enough to suggest a pan, a percussion-lock would not have a pan.
I like how Bud’s calves are drawn in this one. She does have racehorse legs! Suicide, though it solves the problems of the person who commits suicide, is hell on family and friends of the suicide. Jin was not thinking of her mother or her boyfriend and how it would devastate them.

Not really apropos of anything, old flintlocks were fairly often re-tooled with caplock mechanisms. Not all by any means, but it was a common upgrade at one time and it was cheaper than buying a new gun. There’s no reason Jin couldn’t have pretty much any gadget laying around.

The pan and the steel were usually replaced during the conversion from flintlock to percussion lock, not always, but commonly. An example of a conversion. I’m going to go with Occam’s razor and assume it is a flintlock and not a conversion until further evidence is forthcoming.

Methinks Mayahuel may not have been aware of just how much Jin has wanted to die, and just how long she’s been unable to die. Then again, perhaps not, since she didn’t bide her time until she was alone– two people with capability to stop her, right there.

In response to another comment I can’t seem to find, I wonder if Mayahuel COULD ‘wipe’ the new glyph. Would that interfere with underlying programming glyphs? Would the dip left do anything, positive or negative? Can’t exactly add more clay, even with slip. The girls have already been baked.